A toxic rubbish dump site in Venice could be transformed into a children’s amusement park under £70m plans unveiled yesterday.

Zamperla Inc, the Italian company that built Coney Island’s latest attractions in New York, wants to turn the contaminated 10-acre manmade island San Biagio into a cultural attraction.

Antonio Zamperla, owner of the company behind two-thirds of the rides at Eurodisney in Paris, said the new theme park will have a cultural slant as well as rides including a 55-metre-tall ferris wheel.

Ambitious plans: Alberto Zamperla, president of Zamperla Inc, points at San Biagio island

How it would look: The £70m plans to transform San Biagio into a cultural amusement partk

Zamperla is promising to spend £5m cleaning up the landfill site, which until 1980 was used to house the city’s waste incinerator, and said the initiative would create 500 jobs.

‘We're talking about the history of Venice - one of my passions - but done my way,’ Zamperla said.'I know what people like, I know my job. We have built theme parks in the US, Russia, Iraq, Mexico and North Korea, China and Thailand.’

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The new theme park, which is pending approval from Venetian authorities, will have three different zones: lagoon, carnival and history, and will boast rollercoasters and high-speed wagons on an artificial lake.

‘To sustain the three cultural parts of the park we need the amusement rides. People won’t pay for a museum,’ Zamperla added.

Abandoned island: The manmade site once housed an incinerator for household waste

The new park, dubbed L'isola San Biagio for now, could be open in two years, attracting up to 11,000 visitors a day within two years ‘if things go smoothly, with no major opposition’, according to Zamperla.

However, Zamperla, which built an amusement park in Germany on the never-activated Kalkar nuclear power plant, have already sparked controversy.

‘We are completely against it. I am not criticising the idea of renovating a degraded area. But we do not need more attractions, we have enough,’ said Matteo Secchi from Venessia.com, which fights local issues.

If the parks gets the green light, tickets will cost 25 euros for adults, and there will also be free access to the island’s beaches, restaurants and cafes.